


SATURDAY MARKET 

> CHARLOTTE MEWt, 



H 




Book ' 



SATURDAY MARKET 



SATURDAY MARKET 

By 
CHARLOTTE MEW 



NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

■ "9 21 
All rights reserved 






Printed in England at 

The Westminster Press, Harrow Road, 

London, W. 



The Author begs to thank the Editors of The 
Nation, The Westminster Gazette, The New Weekly, 
The Englishwoman, The Egoist, The Graphic, The 
Athenceum, and The Monthly Chapbook for per- 
mission to reprint some of the poems in this book. 



To 



He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him a long life 
even for ever and ever. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Farmer's Bride ii 

Fame . 1 3 

The Narrow Door 14 

The Fete 15 

Beside the Bed 20 

In Nunhead Cemetery 21 

The Pedlar 24 

Pecheresse 25 

The Changeling 27 

Ken 29 

A Quoi Bon Dire 32 

The Quiet House 33 

On the Asylum Road 36 

Jour Des Morts (Cimetiere Montparnasse) 37 

The Forest Road 38 

Madeleine in Church 40 

Exspecto Resurrectionem 47 

On the Road to the Sea 48 

The Sunlit House 50 

The Shade- Catchers 51 

Le Sacre-Cozur (Montmartre) 52 

Song 53 

Saturday Market 54 

Arracombe Wood 55 

Sea Love 56 

The Road to Kerity 57 

I Have Been Through the Gates 58 

The Cenotaph 59 



THE FARMER'S BRIDE 

THREE Summers since I chose a maid, 
Too young maybe — but more's to do 
At harvest-time than bide and woo. 

When us was wed she turned afraid 
Of love and me and all things human ; 
Like the shut of a winter's day. 
Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman — 
More like a little frightened fay. 

One night, in the Fall, she runned away. 

" Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said, 
'Should properly have been abed ; 
But sure enough she wasn't there 
Lying awake with her wide brown stare. 
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down 
We chased her, flying like a hare 
Before our lanterns. To Church-Town 

All in a shiver and a scare 
We caught her, fetched her home at last 

And turned the key upon her, fast. 

She does the work about the house 

As well as most, but like a mouse : 
Happy enough to chat and play 
With birds and rabbits and such as they, 
So long as men-folk keep away. 

" Not near, not near ! " her eyes beseech 

When one of us comes within reach. 
The women say that beasts in stall 
Look round like children at her call. 
I've hardly heard her speak at all. 

Shy as a leveret, swift as he, 
Straight and slight as a young larch tree, 
Sweet as the first wild violets, she, 
To her wild self. But what to me ? 



n 



The short days shorten and the oaks are brown, 
The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky, 

One leaf in the still air falls slowly down, 
A magpie's spotted feathers lie 

On the black earth spread white with rime, 

The berries redden up to Christmas-time. 
What's Christmas-time without there be 
Some other in the house than we ! 

She sleeps up in the attic there 
Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair 
Betwixt us. Oh ! my God ! the down, 
The soft young down of her, the brown, 
The brown of her — her eyes, her hair, her hair ! 



12 



FAME 

SOMETIMES in the over-heated house, but not for long, 
Smirking and speaking rather loud, 
I see myself among the crowd, 
Where no one fits the singer to his song, 
Or sifts the unpainted from the painted faces 
Of the people who are always on my stair ; 
They were not with me when I walked in heavenly places ; 

But could I spare 
In the blind Earth's great silences and spaces, 
The din, the scuffle, the long stare 
If I went back and it was not there ? 
Back to the old known things that are the new, 
The folded glory of the gorse, the sweet-briar air, 
To the larks that cannot praise us, knowing nothing of what we do 

And the divine, wise trees that do not care 
Yet, to leave Fame, still with such eyes and that bright hair ! 
God ! If I might ! And before I go hence 
Take in her stead 
To our tossed bed, 
One little dream, no matter how small, how wild. 
Just now, I think I found it in a field, under a fence — 
A frail, dead, new-born lamb, ghostly and pitiful and white, 
A blot upon the night, 
The moon's dropped child ! 



13 



THE NARROW DOOR 

THE narrow door, the narrow door 
On the three steps of which the cafe children play 
Mostly at shop with pebbles from the shore, 
It is always shut this narrow door 
But open for a little while to-day. 

And round it, each with pebbles in his hand, 

A silenced crowd the cafe children stand 

To see the long box jerking down the bend 

Of twisted stair ; then set on end, 

Quite filling up the narrow door 

Till it comes out and does not go in any more. 

Along the quay you see it wind, 
The slow black line. Someone pulls up the blind 
Of the small window just above the narrow door — 
" Tiens ! que veux-tu acheier? " Renee cries, 
" Mais, pour quat'sous, des oignons," Jean replies 
And one pays down with pebbles from the shore. 



14 



THE FETE 

TO-NIGHT again the moon's white mat 
Stretches across the dormitory floor 
While outside, like an evil cat 

The pion prowls down the dark corridor, 
Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite 
For getting leave to sleep in town last night. 
But it was none of us who made that noise, 

Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies 
Out of the ivy — he will say it was us boys — 
Seigneur mon Dieu ! the sacre soul of spies ! 
He would like to catch each dream that lies 
Hidden behind our sleepy eyes : 
Their dream ? But mine — it is the moon and the wood that sees 
All my long life how I shall hate the trees ! 

In the Place d'Armes, the dusty planes, all Summer through 
Dozed with the market women in the sun and scarcely stirred 

To see the quiet things that crossed the Square — , 
A tiny funeral, the flying shadow of a bird, 

The hump-backed barber CMlestin Lemaire, 

Old madame Michel in her three-wheeled chair, 
And filing past to Vespers, two and two, 
The demoiselles of the pensionnat. 
Towed like a ship through the harbour bar, 

Safe into port, where le petit Jesus 
Perhaps makes nothing of the look they shot at you : 

Si, c'est defendu, mais que voulez-vous ? 
It was the sun. The sunshine weaves 
A pattern on dull stones : the sunshine leaves 

The portraiture of dreams upon the eyes 
Before it dies : 

All Summer through 
The dust hung white upon the drowsy planes 
Till suddenly they woke with the Autumn rains. 



15 



It is not only the little boys 
Who have hardly got away from toys, 
But I, who am seventeen next year, 
Some nights, in bed, have grown cold to hear 

That lonely passion of the rain 
Which makes you think of being dead, 
And of somewhere living to lay your head 

As if you were a child again, 
Crying for one thing, known and near 
Your empty heart, to still the hunger and the fear 
That pelts and beats with it against the pane. 

But I remember smiling too 
At all the sun's soft tricks and those Autumn dreads 

In winter time, when the grey light broke slowly through 
The frosted window- lace to drag us shivering from our beds. 

And when at dusk the singing wind swung down 
Straight from the stars to the dark country roads 
Beyond the twinkling town, 

Striking the leafless poplar boughs as he went by, 
Like some poor, stray dog by the wayside lying dead, 
We left behind us the old world of dread, 
I and the wind as we strode whistling on under the Winter sky. 

And then in Spring for three days came the Fair 

Just as the planes were starting into bud 
Above the caravans : you saw the dancing bear 

Pass on his chain ; and heard the jingle and the thud. 
Only four days ago 
They let you out of this dull show 
To slither down the montagne russe and chaff the man a la tete de veau- 

Hit, slick, the bull's eye at the tir, 
Spin round and round till your head went queer 
On the porcs-roulants . Oh ! Id Id ! la fete ! 
Va pour du vin, et le tete-a-tete 
With the girl who sugars the quafres ! Pauvrette, 
How thin she was ; but she smiled, you bet, 



16 



As she took your tip — " One does not forget 
The good days, Monsieur." Said with a grace, 
But sacribleu ! what a ghost of a face ! 

And no fun too for the demoiselles 
Of the pensionnat, who were hurried past, 

With their " Oh, que c'est beau — Ah, qu'elle est belle ! " 
A lap-dog's life from first to last ! 
The good nights are not made for sleep, nor the good days for dreaming in, 

And at the end in the big Circus tent we sat and shook and stewed like sin 

Some children there had got — but where ? 
Sent from the south, perhaps — a red bouquet 

Of roses, sweetening the fetid air 
With scent from gardens by some far away blue bay. 

They threw one at the dancing bear ; 
The white clown caught it. From St. Remy's tower 

The deep, slow bell tolled out the hour ; 
The black clown, with his dirty grin 

Lay, sprawling in the dust, as She rode in. 

She stood on a white horse — and suddenly you saw the bend 

Of a far-off road at dawn, with knights riding by, 
A field of spears — and then the gallant day 
Go out in storm, with ragged clouds low down, sullen and grey 

Against red heavens : wild and awful, such a sky 

As witnesses against you at the end 
Of a great battle ; bugles blowing, blood and dust — 
The old Morte d' Arthur, fight you must — . 

It died in anger. But it was not death 

That had you by the throat, stopping your breath. 
She looked like Victory. She rode my way. 

She laughed at the black clown and then she flew 
A bird above us, on the wing 



l 7 



Of her white arms ; and you saw through 

A rent in the old tent, a patch of sky 

With one dim star. She flew, but not so high — 

And then she did not fly ; 
She stood in the bright moonlight at the door 
Of a strange room, she threw her slippers on the floor — 
Again, again 
You heard the patter of the rain, 
The starving rain — it was this Thing, 
Summer was this, the gold mist in your eyes ; — 
Oh God ! it dies, 
But after death — , 
To-night the splendour and the sting 
Blows back and catches at your breath, 
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, 

the Spring, 
The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted 
Thing ! 

At first you scarcely saw her face, 

You knew the maddening feet were there, 
What called was that half-hidden, white unrest 
To which now and then she pressed 

Her finger tips ; but as she slackened pace 

And turned and looked at you it grew quite bare : 
There was not anything you did not dare : — 
Like trumpeters the hours passed until the last day of the Fair. 

In the Place d'Armes all afternoon 

The building birds had sung " Soon, soon," 
The shuttered streets slept sound that night, 

It was full moon : 
The path into the wood was almost white, 
The trees were very still and seemed to stare : 

Not far before your soul the Dream flits on, 

But when you touch it, it is gone 
And quite alone your soul stands there. 



18 



Mother of Christ, no one has seen your eyes : how can men pray 

Even unto you ? 
There were only wolves' eyes in the wood — 

My Mother is a woman too : 
Nothing is true that is not good, 

With that quick smile of hers, I have heard her say ; — 
I wish I had gone back home to-day ; 

I should have watched the light that so gently dies 

From our high window, in the Paris skies, 
The long, straight chain 

Of lamps hung out along the Seine : 
I would have turned to her and let the rain 
Beat on her breast as it does against the pane ; — 

Nothing will be the same again ; — 
There is something strange in my little Mother's eyes, 
There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring — 
The smell of beasts, the smell of dust — The Enchanted Thing ! 

All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern 

And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair 
Of any woman can belong to God. 
The stalks are cruelly broken where we trod, 

There had been violets there, 

I shall not care 
As I used to do when I see the bracken burn. 



19 



BESIDE THE BED 

SOMEONE^ has shut the shining eyes, straightened and folded 
The wandering hands quietly covering the unquiet breast : 
So, smoothed and silenced you lie, like a child, not again to be questioned or scolded ; 
But, for you, not one of us believes that this is rest. 

Not so to close the windows down can cloud and deaden 
The blue beyond : or to screen the wavering flame subdue its breath : 

Why, if I lay my cheek to your cheek, your grey lips, like dawn, would quiver and redden, 
Breaking into the old, odd smile at this fraud of death. 

Because all night you have not turned to us or spoken 

It is time for you to wake ; your dreams were never very deep : 
I, for one, have seen the thin, bright, twisted threads of them dimmed suddenly and broken, 

This is only a most piteous pretence of sleep ! 



20 



IN NUNHEAD CEMETERY 

IT is the clay that makes the earth stick to his spade ; 
He fills in holes like this year after year ; 
The others have gone ; they were tired, and half afraid, 
But I would rather be standing here ; 

There is nowhere else to go. I have seen this place 

From the windows of the train that's going past 
Against the sky. This is rain on my face — 

It was raining here when I saw it last. 

There is something horrible about a flower ; 

This, broken in my hand, is one of those 
He threw in just now : it will not live another hour ; 

There are thousands more : you do not miss a rose. 

One of the children hanging about 

Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled 
This morning, after THAT was carried out ; 

There is something terrible about a child. 

We were like children, last week, in the Strand ; 

That was the day you laughed at me 
Because I tried to make you understand 

The cheap, stale chap I used to be 

Before I saw the things you made me see. 

This is not a real place ; perhaps by-and-by 

I shall wake — I am getting drenched with all this rain : 
To-morrow I will tell you about the eyes of the Crystal Palace train 

Looking down on us, and you will laugh and I shall see what you see again. 

Not here, not now. We said " Not yet 
Across our low stone parapet 
Will the quick shadows of the sparrows fall." 



21 



But still it was a lovely thing 

Through the grey months to wait for Spring 

With the birds that go a-gypsying 
In the parks till the blue seas call. 

And next to these, you used to care 

For the lions in Trafalgar Square, 
Who'll stand and speak for London when her bell of Judgment tolls 

And the gulls at Westminster that were 

The old sea- captains' souls. 
To-day again the brown tide splashes, step by step, the river stair, 

And the gulls are there ! 

By a month we have missed our Day : 

The children would have hung about 
Round the carriage and over the way 

As you and I came out. 

We should have stood on the gulls' black cliffs and heard the sea 

And seen the moon's white track, 
I would have called, you would have come to me 

And kissed me back. 

You have never done that : I do not know 

Why I stood staring at your bed 
And heard you, though you spoke so low, 

But could not reach your hands, your little head. 
There was nothing we could not do, you said, 

And you went, and I let you go ! 

Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through, 

Though I am damned for it we two will lie 

And burn, here where the starlings fly 

To these white stones from the wet sky — ; 

Dear, you will say this is not I — 
It would not be you, it would not be you ! 



22 



If for only a little while 

You will think of it you will understand, 
If you will touch my sleeve and smile 
As you did that morning in the Strand 
I can wait quietly with you 
Or go away if you want me to — 
God ! What is God ? but your face has gone and your hand ! 
Let me stay here too. 

When I was quite a little lad 
At Christmas time we went half mad 
For joy of all the toys we had, 
And then we used to sing about the sheep 
The shepherds watched by night ; 
We used to pray to Christ to keep 

Our small souls safe till morning light — ; 
I am scared, I am staying with you to-night — 
Put me to sleep. 

I shall stay here : here you can see the sky ; 
The houses in the streets are much too high ; 

There is no one left to speak to there ; 

Here they are everywhere, 
And just above them fields and fields of roses lie — 
If he would dig it all up again they would not die. 



23 



THE PEDLAR 

LEND me, a little while, the key 
That locks your heavy heart, and I'll give you back — 
Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see, 
This little Key of Dreams out of my pack. 

The road, the road, beyond men's bolted doors, 

There shall I walk and you go free of me, 
For yours lies North across the moors, 

And mine South. To what sea ? 

How if we stopped and let our solemn selves go by, 
While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don't do, 

And by the wayside this forgotten you and I 
Sat, and were twenty-two ? 

Give me the key that locks your tired eyes, 

And I will lend you this one from my pack, 
Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise 

Take it. No, give it back ! 



24 



PECHERESSE 

DOWN the long quay the slow boats glide, 
While here and there a house looms white 
Against the gloom of the waterside, 
And some high window throws a light 
As they sail out into the night. 

At dawn they will bring in again 
To women knuting on the quay 

Who wait for him, their man of men ; 
I stand with them, and watch the sea 
Which may have taken mine from me. 

Just so the long days come and go. 

The nights, ma Doue* ! the nights are cold ! 
Our Lady's heart is as frozen snow, 

Since this one sin I have not told ; 

And I shall die or perhaps grow old 

Before he comes. The foreign ships 
Bring many a one of face and name 

As strange as his, to buy your lips, 
A gold piece for a scarlet shame 
Like mine. But mine was not the same. 

One night was ours, one short grey day 
Of sudden sin, unshrived, untold. 

He found me, and I lost the way 
To Paradise for him. I sold 
My soul for love and not for gold. 



2 5 



He bought my soul, but even so, 

My face is all that he has seen, 
His is the only face I know, 
And in the dark church, like a screen, 

It shuts God out ; it comes between ; 

While in some narrow foreign street 
Or loitering on the crowded quay, 

Who knows what others he may meet 
To turn his eyes away from me ? 
Many are fair to such as he ! 

There is but one for such as I 
To love, to hate, to hunger for ; 

I shall, perhaps, grow old and die, 
With one short day to spend and store, 
One night, in all my life, no more. 

Just so the long days come and go, 

Yet this one sin I will not tell 
Though Mary's heart is as frozen snow 
And all nights are cold for one warmed too well. 

But, oh ! ma Doue ! the nights of Hell I 



26 



THE CHANGELING 

TOLL no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother, 
Waste no sighs ; 
There are my sisters, there is my little brother 

Who plays in the place called Paradise, 
Your children all, your children for ever ; 

But I, so wild, 
Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never, 
Never, I know, but half your child ! 

In the garden at play, all day, last summer, 

Far and away I heard 
The sweet " tweet- tweet " of a strange new-comer, 

The dearest, clearest call of a bird. 
It lived down there in the deep green hollow, 

My own old home, and the fairies say 
The word of a bird is a thing to follow, 

So I was away a night and a day. 

One evening, too, by the nursery fire, 

We snuggled close and sat round so still, 
When suddenly as the wind blew higher, 

Something scratched on the window-sill. 
A pinched brown face peered in — I shivered ; 

No one listened or seemed to see ; 
The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered, 

Whoo — I knew it had come for me ; 

Some are as bad as bad can be ! 
All night long they danced in the rain, 
Round and round in a dripping chain, 
Threw their caps at the window-pane, 

Tried to make me scream and shout 

And fling the bedclothes all about : 
I meant to stay in bed that night, 
And if only you had left a light 

They would never have got me out. 



27 



Sometimes I wouldn't speak, you see, 

Or answer when you spoke to me, 
Because in the long, still dusks of Spring 
You can hear the whole world whispering ; 

The shy green grasses making love, 

The feathers grow on the dear, grey dove, 

The tiny heart of the redstart beat, 

The patter of the squirrel's feet, 
The pebbles pushing in the silver streams, 
The rushes talking in their dreams, 

The swish-swish of the bat's black wings, 

The wild- wood bluebell's sweet ting- tings, 
Humming and hammering at your ear, 
Everything there is to hear 
In the heart of hidden things, 

But not in the midst of the nursery riot, 

That's why I wanted to be quiet, 
Couldn't do my sums, or sing, 
Or settle down to anything. 

And when, for that, I was sent upstairs 

I did kneel down to say my prayers ; 
But the King who sits on your high church steeple 
Has nothing to do with us fairy people ! 

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother, 

Learned all my lessons and liked to play, 
And dearly I loved the little pale brother 

Whom some other bird must have called away. 
Why did They bring me here to make me 

Not quite bad and not quite good, 
Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me 

Back to their wet, wild wood ? 
Now, every night I shall see the windows shining, 

The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam, 
While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining 

In the hollow by the stream. 
Black and chill are Their nights on the wold ; 

And They live so long and They feel no pain : 
I shall grow up, but never grow old, 
I shall always, always be very cold, 
I shall never come back again ! 



28 



KEN 

THE town is old and very steep, 
A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers, 
And black clad people walking in their sleep — 
A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowers 
To her new grave ; and watched from end to end 
By the great Church above, through the still hours 
But in the morning and the early dark 
The children wake to dart from doors and call 
Down the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend, 

Before it climbs up to the park, 
Ken's is the gabled house facing the Castle wall. 

When first I came upon him there 
Suddenly, on the half-lit stair, 
I think I hardly found a trace 
Of likeness to a human face 
In his. And I said then 
If in His image God made men, 
Some other must have made poor Ken — 
But for his eyes which looked at you 
As two red, wounded stars might do. 

He scarcely spoke, you scarcely heard, 

His voice broke off in little jars 
To tears sometimes. An uncouth bird 

He seemed as he ploughed up the street, 
Groping, with knarred, high-lifted feet 
And arms thrust out as if to beat 
Always against a threat of bars. 

And oftener than not there'd be 
A child just higher than his knee 
Trotting beside him. Through his dim 



29 



Long twilight this, at least, shone clear, 
That all the children and the deer, 
Whom every day he went to see 
Out in the park, belonged to him. 

" God help the folk that next him sits 
He fidgets so, with his poor wits." 
The neighbours said on Sunday nights 
When he would go to Church to " see the lights ! " 
Although for these he used to fix 
His eyes upon a crucifix 
In a dark corner, staring on 
Till everybody else had gone. 
And sometimes, in his evil fits, 
You could not move him from his chair — 
You did not look at him as he sat there, 

Biting his rosary to bits. 
While pointing to the Christ he tried to say 
" Take it away." 

Nothing was dead : 
He said " a bird " if he picked up a broken wing, 

A perished leaf or any such thing 

Was just " a rose " ; and once when I had said 
He must not stand and knock there any more, 
He left a twig on the mat outside my door. 

Not long ago 
The last thrush stiffened in the snow, 
While black against a sullen sky 

The sighing pines stood by. 
But now the wind has left our rattled pane 
To flutter the hedge-sparrow's wing, 
The birches in the wood are red again 

And only yesterday 
The larks went up a little way to sing 



30 



What lovers say 
Who loiter in the lanes to-day ; 
The buds begin to talk of May 
With learned rooks on city trees, 

And if God please 

With all of these 
We too, shall see another Spring. 

But in that red brick barn upon the hill 

I wonder — can one own the deer, 
And does one walk with children still 

As one did here — 

Do roses grow 
Beneath those twenty windows in a row- 

And if some night 
When you have not seen any light 
They cannot move you from your chair 

What happens there ? 

I do not know. 

So, when they took 
Ken to that place, I did not look 

After he called and turned on me 
His eyes. These I shall see — 



3 1 



A QUOI BON DIRE 

SEVENTEEN years ago you said 
Something that sounded like Good-bye ; 
And everybody thinks that you are dead, 
But I. 

So I, as I grow stiff and cold 
To this and that say Good-bye too ; 
And everybody sees that I am old 
But you. 

And one fine morning in a sunny lane 
Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear 

That nobody can love their way again 
While over there 
You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair. 



32 



THE QUIET HOUSE 

WHEN we were children old Nurse used to say, 
The house was like an auction or a fair 
Until the lot of us were safe in bed. 
It has been quiet as the country-side 
Since Ted and Janey and then Mother died 
And Tom crossed Father and was sent away. 
After the lawsuit he could not hold up his head, 
Poor Father, and he does not care 
For people here, or to go anywhere. 

To get away to Aunt's for that week-end 
Was hard enough ; (since then, a year ago, 
He scarcely lets me slip out of his sight — ) 

At first I did not like my cousin's friend, 
I did not think I should remember him : 
His voice has gone, his face is growing dim 

And if I like him now I do not know. 
He frightened me before he smiled — 
He did not ask me if he might — 
He said that he would come one Sunday night, 
He spoke to me as if I were a child. 

No year has been like this that has just gone by ; 

It may be that what Father says is true, 
If things are so it does not matter why : 

But everything has burned, and not quite through. 

The colours of the world have turned 

To flame, the blue, the gold has burned 
In what used to be such a leaden sky. 
When you are burned quite through you die. 



33 



Red is the strangest pain to bear ; 
In Spring the leaves on the budding trees ; 
Tn Summer the roses are worse than these, 

More terrible than they are sweet : 

A rose can stab you across the street 
Deeper than any knife : 

And the crimson haunts you everywhere — 
Thin shafts of sunlight, like the ghosts of reddened swords have struck our stair 
As if, coming down, you had spilt your life. 

I think that my soul is red 
Like the soul of a sword or a scarlet flower : 
But when these are dead 
They have had their hour. 

I shall have had mine, too, 

For from head to feet, 
I am burned and stabbed half through, 

And the pain is deadly sweet. 

The things that kill us seem 

Blind to the death they give : 
It is only in our dream 

The things that kill us live. 

The room is shut where Mother died, 

The other rooms are as they were, 
The world goes on the same outside, 

The sparrows fly across the Square, 

The children play as we four did there, 

The trees grow green and brown and bare, 
The sun shines on the dead Church spire, 



34 



And nothing lives here but the fire, 
While Father watches from his chair 

Day follows day 
The same, or now and then, a different grey, 

Till, like his hair, 
Which Mother said was wavy once and bright, 

They will all turn white. 

To-night I heard a bell again— 
Outside it was the same mist of fine rain, 
The lamps just lighted down the long, dim street, 
No one for me — 

I think it is myself I go to meet : 
I do not care ; some day I shall not think ; I shall not be ! 



35 



ON THE ASYLUM ROAD 

THEIRS is the house whose windows — every pane — 
Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass : 
Sometimes you come upon them in the lane, 
The saddest crowd that you will ever pass. 

But still we merry town or village folk 

Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin, 

And think no shame to stop and crack a joke 
With the incarnate wages of man's sin. 

None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet, 
The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet, 
The hare-bell bowing on his stem, 
Dance not with us ; their pulses beat 
To fainter music ; nor do we to them 
Make their life sweet. 

The gayest crowd that they will ever pass 

Are we to brother-shadows in the lane : 
Our windows, too, are clouded glass 

To them, yes, every pane ! 



36 



JOUR DES MORTS 

(ClMETIERE MONTPARNASSE.) 

SWEETHEART, is this the last of all our posies 
And little festivals, my flowers are they 
But white and wistful ghosts of gayer roses 

Shut with you in this grim garden ? Not to-day, 
Ah ! no ! come out with me before the grey gate closes 
It is your fete and here is your bouquet ! 



37 



THE FOREST ROAD 

THE forest road, 
The infinite straight road stretching away 
World without end : the breathless road between the walls 
Of the black listening trees : the hushed, grey road 
Beyond the window that you shut to-night 
Crying that you would look at it by day — 
There is a shadow there that sings and calls 
But not for you. Oh ! hidden eyes that plead in sleep 
Against the lonely dark, if I could touch the fear 
And leave it kissed away on quiet lids — 
If I could hush these hands that are half-awake, 
Groping for me in sleep I could go free. 
I wish that God would take them out of mine 
And fold them like the wings of frightened birds 
Shot cruelly down, but fluttering into quietness so soon, 
Broken, forgotten things ; there is no grief for them in the green Spring 
When the new birds fly back to the old trees. 

But it shall not be so with you. I will look back. I wish I knew that God would stand 
Smiling and looking down on you when morning comes, 
To hold you, when you wake, closer than I, 
So gently though : and not with famished lips or hungry arms : 
He does not hurt the frailest, dearest things 
As we do in the dark. See, dear, your hair — 
I must unloose this hair that sleeps and dreams 
About my face, and clings like the brown weed 
To drowned, delivered things, tossed by the tired sea 
Back to the beaches. Oh ! your hair ! If you had lain 
A long -time dead on the rough, glistening ledge 
Of some black cliflf, forgotten by the tide, 

The raving winds would tear, the dripping brine would rust away 
Fold after fold of all the loveliness 
That wraps you round, and makes you, lying here, 
The passionate fragrance that the roses are. 



38 



But death would spare the glory of your head 

In the long sweetness of the hair that does not die : 

The spray would leap to it in every storm, 

The scent of the unsilenced sea would linger on 

In these dark waves, and round the silence that was you — 

Only the nesting gulls would hear — but there would still be whispers in your hair ; 

Keep them for me ; keep them for me. What is this singing on the road 

That makes all other music like the music in a dream — 

Dumb to the dancing and the marching feet ; you know, in dreams, you see 

Old pipers playing that you cannot hear, 

And ghostly drums that only seem to beat. This seems to climb : 

Is it the music of a larger place ? It makes our room too small : it is like a stair, 

A calling stair that climbs up to a smile you scarcely see, 

Dim, but so waited for ; and you know what a smile is, how it calls, 

How if I smiled you always ran to me. 

Now you must sleep forgetfully, as children do. 

There is a Spirit sits by us in sleep 

Nearer than those who walk with us in the bright day. 

I think he has a tranquil, saving face : I think he came 

Straight from the hills : he may have suffered there in time gone by, 

And once, from those forsaken heights, looked down, 

Lonely himself, on all the lonely sorrows of the earth. 

It is his kingdom — Sleep. If I could leave you there — 

If, without waking you, I could get up and reach the door — ! 

We used to go together. — Shut, scared eyes, 

Poor, desolate, desperate hands, it is not I 

Who thrust you off. No, take your hands away — 

I cannot strike your lonely hands. Yes, I have struck your heart, 

It did not come so near. Then lie you there 

Dear and wild heart behind this quivering snow 

With two red stains on it : and I will strike and tear 

Mine out, and scatter it to yours. Oh ! throbbing dust, 

You that were life, our little wind-blown hearts ! 

The road ! the road ! 
There is a shadow there : I see my soul, 
I hear my soul, singing among the trees ! 



39 



MADELEINE IN CHURCH 

HERE, in the darkness, where this plaster saint 
Stands nearer than God stands to our distress, 
And one small candle shines, but not so faint 

As the far lights of everlastingness 
I'd rather kneel than over there, in open day 
Where Christ is hanging, rather pray 
To something more like my own clay, 

Not too divine ; 
For, once, perhaps my little saint 
Before he got his niche and crown, 
Had one short stroll about the town ; 
It brings him closer, just that taint 

And anyone can wash the paint 
Off our poor faces, his and mine ! 

Is that why I see Monty now ? equal to any saint, poor boy, as good as gold, 

But still, with just the proper trace 

Of earthliness on his shining wedding face ; 

And then gone suddenly blank and old 

The hateful day of the divorce : 

Stuart got his, hands down, of course 

Crowing like twenty cocks and grinning like a horse : 

But Monty took it hard. All said and done I liked him best, — 

He was the first, he stands out clearer than the rest. 

It seems too funny all we other rips 
Should have immortal souls ; Monty and Redge quite damnably 
Keep theirs afloat while we go down like scuttled ships. — 
It's funny too, how easily we sink, 
One might put up a monument, I think 
To half the world and cut across it " Lost at Sea ! " 
I should drown Jim, poor little sparrow, if I netted him to-night — 
No, it's no use this penny light — 
Or my poor saint with his tin-pot crown — 
The trees of Calvary are where they were, 
When we are sure that we can spare 



40 



The tallest, let us go and strike it down 
And leave the other two still standing there. 

I, too, would ask Him to remember me 
If there were any Paradise beyond this earth that I could see. 

Oh ! quiet Christ who never knew 
The poisonous fangs that bite us through 

And make us do the things we do, 
See how we suffer and fight and die, 

How helpless and how low we lie, 
God holds You, and You hang so high, 
Though no one looking long at You, 
Can think You do not suffer too, 
But, up there, from your still, star-lighted tree 
What can You know, what can Y'ou really see 
Of this dark ditch, the soul of me ! 

We are what we are : when I was half a child I could not sit 
Watching black shadows on green lawns and red carnations burning in the sun, 
Without paying so heavily for it 
That joy and pain, like any mother and her unborn child were almost one. 
I could hardly bear 
The dreams upon the eyes of white geraniums in the dusk, 
The thick, close voice of musk, 
The jessamine music on the thin night air, 
Or, sometimes, my own hands about me anywhere — 
The sight of my own face (for it was lovely then) even the scent of my own hair, 
Oh ! there was nothing, nothing that did not sweep to the high seat 
Of laughing gods, and then blow down and beat 
My soul into the highway dust, as hoofs do the dropped roses of the street. 
I think my body was my soul, 
And when we are made thus 
Who shall control 
Our hands, our eyes, the wandering passion of our feet, 
Who shall teach us 
To thrust the world out of our heart ; to say, till perhaps in death, 

When the race is run, 



4i 



And it is forced from us with our last breath 
" Thy will be done " ? 
If it is Your will that we should be content with the tame, bloodless things. 
As pale as angels smirking by, with folded wings. 
Oh ! I know Virtue, and the peace it brings ! 
The temperate, well-worn smile 
The one man gives you, when you are evermore his own : 
And afterwards the child's, for a little while, 

With its unknowing and all- seeing eyes 
So soon to change, and make you feel how quick 
The clock goes round. If one had learned the trick — 
(How does one though ?) quite early on, 
Of long green pastures under placid skies, 
One might be walking now with patient truth. 
What did we ever care for it, who have asked for youth, 
When, oh ! my God ! this is going or has gone ? 

There is a portrait of my mother, at nineteen, 
With the black spaniel, standing by the garden seat, 
The dainty head held high against the painted green 
And throwing out the youngest smile, shy, but half haughty and half sweet. 
Her picture then : but simply Youth, or simply Spring 
To me to-day : a radiance on the wall, 
So exquisite, so heart-breaking a thing 
Beside the mask that I remember, shrunk and small, 
Sapless and lined like a dead leaf, 
All that was left of oh ! the loveliest face, by time and grief ! 

And in the glass, last night, I saw a ghost behind my chair — 
Yet why remember it, when one can still go moderately gay — ? 
Or could — with any one of the old crew, 

But oh ! these boys ! the solemn way 
They take you, and the things they say — 
This " I have only as long as you " 
When you remind them you are not precisely twenty-two — 
Although at heart perhaps — God ! if it were 
Only the face, only the hair ! 



42 



If Jim had written to me as he did to-day 
A year ago — and now it leaves me cold — 

I know what this means, old, old, old ! 
Et avec ca — mais on a vecu, tout se pate. 

That is not always true : there was my Mother — (well at least the dead are free !) 
Yoked to the man that Father was ; yoked to the woman I am, Monty too ; 
The little portress at the Convent School, stewing in hell so patiently ; 
The poor, fair boy who shot himself at Aix. And what of me — and what of me ? 
But I, I paid for what I had, and they for nothing. No, one cannot see 
How it shall be made up to them in some serene eternity. 
If there were fifty heavens God could not give us back the child who went or never came; 
Here, on our little patch of this great earth, the sun of any darkened day, 
Not one of all the starry buds hung on the hawthorn trees of last year's May, 
No shadow from the sloping fields of yesterday ; 
For every hour they slant across the hedge a different way, 
The shadows are never the same. 

" Find rest in Him " One knows the parsons' tags — 
Back to the fold, across the evening fields, like any flock of baa-ing sheep : 
Yes, it may be, when He has shorn, led us to slaughter, torn the bleating soul in us to rags, 
For so He giveth His beloved sleep. 
Oh ! He will take us stripped and done, 
Driven into His heart. So we are won : 
Then safe, safe are we ? in the shelter of His everlasting wings — 
I do not envy Him his victories, His arms are full of broken things. 

But I shall not be in them. Let Him take 
The finer ones, the easier to break. 
And they are not gone, yet, for me, the lights, the colours, the perfumes, 
Though now they speak rather in sumptuous rooms, 
In silks and in gem- like wines ; 
Here, even, in this corner where my little candle shines 
And overhead the lancet-window glows 
With golds and crimsons you could almost drink 



43 



To know how jewels taste, just as I used to think 
There was the scent in every red and yellow rose 

Of all the sunsets. But this place is grey, 
And much too quiet. No one here, 
Why, this is awful, this is fear ! 
Nothing to see, no face, 
Nothing to hear except your heart beating in space 
As if the world was ended. Dead at last ! 
Dead soul, dead body, tied together fast. 
These to go on with and alone, to the slow end : 
No one to sit with, really, or to speak to, friend to friend : 
Out of the long procession, black or white or red 
Not one left now to say " Still I am here, then see you, dear, lay here your head." 
Only the doll's house looking on the Park 
To-night, all nights, I know, when the man puts the lights out, very dark. 
With, upstairs, in the blue and gold box of a room, just the maids' footsteps overhead, 
Then utter silence and the empty world — the room — the bed — 

The corpse ! No, not quite dead, while this cries out in me, 
But nearly : very soon to be 
A handful of forgotten dust — 
There must be someone. Christ ! there must, 

Tell me there will be some one. Who ? 
If there were no one else, could it be You ? 



How old was Mary out of whom you cast 
So many devils ? Was she young or perhaps for years 
She had sat staring, with dry eyes, at this and that man going past 
Till suddenly she saw You on the steps of Simon's house 
And stood and looked at You through tears. 

I think she must have known by those 
The thing, for what it was that had come to her. 
For some of us there is a passion, I suppose 
So far from earthly cares and earthly fears 
That in its stillness you can hardly stir 

Or in its nearness, lift your hand, 
So great that you have simply got to stand 
Looking at it through tears, through tears 



44 



Then straight from these there broke the kiss, 

I think You must have known by this 
The thing, for what it was, that had come to You : 

She did not love You like the rest, 
It was in her own way, but at the worst, the best, 

She gave you something altogether new. 
And through it all , from her, no word, 

She scarcely saw You, scarcely heard : 
Surely You knew when she so touched You with her hair, 

Or by the wet cheek lying there, 
And while her perfume clung to You from head to feet all through the day 
That You can change the things for which we care, 
But even You, unless You kill us, not the way. 

This, then was peace for her, but passion too. 
I wonder was it like a kiss that once I knew, 
The only one that I would care to take 
Into the grave with me, to which if there were afterwards, to wake. 
Almost as happy as the carven dead 
In some dim chancel lying head by head 
We slept with it, but face to face, the whole night through — 
One breath, one throbbing quietness, as if the thing behind our lips was endless life, 
Lost, as I woke, to hear in the strange earthly dawn, his " Are you there ? " 
And lie still, listening to the wind outside, among the firs. 

So Mary chose the dream of Him for what was left to her of night and day, 
It is the only truth : it is the dream in us that neither life nor death nor any other thing 

can take away : 
But if she had not touched Him in the doorway of the dream could she have cared so 

much ? 
She was a sinner, we are what we are : the spirit afterwards, but first, the touch. 

And He has never shared with me my haunted house beneath the trees 
Of Eden and Calvary, with its ghosts that have not any eyes for tears, 
And the happier guests who would not see, or if they did, remember these, 
Though they lived there a thousand years. 
Outside, too gravely looking at me, He seems to stand, 



45 



And looking at Him, if my forgotten spirit came 
Unwillingly back, what could it claim 
Of those calm eyes, that quiet speech, 
Breaking like a slow tide upon the beach, 

The scarred, not quite human hand ? — 
Unwillingly back to the burden of old imaginings 
When it has learned so long not to think, not to be, 
Again, again it would speak as it has spoken to me of things 
That I shall not see ! 

I cannot bear to look at this divinely bent and gracious head : 
When I was small I never quite believed that He was dead 
And at the Convent school I used to lie awake in bed 
Thinking about His hands. It did not matter what they said, 
He was alive to me, so hurt, so hurt ! And most of all in Holy Week 
When there was no one else to see 
I used to think it would not hurt me too, so terribly, 
If He had ever seemed to notice me 
Or, if, for once, He would only speak. 



4 6 



EXSPECTO RESURRECTIONEM 

OH ! King who hast the key 
Of that dark room, 
The last which prisons us but held not Thee, 
Thou know'st its gloom. 
Dost Thou a little love this one 

Shut in to-night, 
Young and so piteously alone, 

Cold — out of sight ? 
Thou know'st how hard and bare 
The pillow of that new-made narrow bed, 
Then leave not there 
So dear a head ! 



47 



ON THE ROAD TO THE SEA 

WE passed each other, turned and stopped for half an hour, then went our way, 
I who make other women smile did not make you — 
But no man can move mountains in a day. 
So this hard thing is yet to do. 

But first I want your life : — before I die I want to see 

The world that lies behind the strangeness of your eyes, 
There is nothing gay or green there for my gathering, it may be, 

Yet on brown fields there lies 
A haunting purple bloom : is there not something in grey skies 

And in grey sea ? 
I want what world there is behind your eyes, 
I want your life and you will not give it me. 

Now, if I look, I see you walking down the years, 

Young, and through August fields — a face, a thought, a swinging dream perched on 

a stile — ; 
I would have liked (so vile we are !) to have taught you tears 
But most to have made you smile. 

To-day is not enough or yesterday : God sees it all — 
Your length on sunny lawns, the wakeful rainy nights — ; tell me — ; (how vain to ask), 

but it is not a question — just a call — ; 
Show me then, only your notched inches climbing up the garden wall, 

I like you best when you were small. 

Is this a stupid thing to say 

Not having spent with you one day ? 
No matter ; I shall never touch your hair 
Or hear the little tick behind your breast, 

Still it is there, 

And as a flying bird 
Brushes the branches where it may not rest 

I have brushed your hand and heard 
The child in you : I like that best 

So small, so dark, so sweet ; and were you also then too grave and wise ? 

Always I think. Then put your far off little hand in mine ; — Oh ! let it rest ; 
I will not stare into the early world beyond the opening eyes, 

Or vex or scare what I love best. 

4 8 



But I want your life before mine bleeds away — 
Here — not in heavenly hereafters — soon, — 
I want your smile this very afternoon, 

(The last of all my vices, pleasant people used to say, 
I wanted and I sometimes got — the Moon !) 

You know, at dusk, the last bird's cry, 
And round the house the flap of the bat's low flight, 

Trees that go black against the sky 
And then — how soon the night ! 

No shadow of you on any bright road again, 
And at the darkening end of this — what voice ? whose kiss ? As if you'd say ! 
It is not I who have walked with you, it will not be I who take away 

Peace, peace, my little handful of the gleaner's grain 

From your reaped fields at the shut of day. 

Peace ! Would you not rather die 
Reeling, — with all the cannons at your ear ? 

So, at least, would I, 
And I may not be here 
To-night, to-morrow morning or next year. 
Still I will let you keep your life a little while, 
See dear ? 
/ have made you smile. 



49 



THE SUNLIT HOUSE 

WHITE through the gate it gleamed and slept 
In shuttered sunshine : the parched garden flowers 
Their fallen petals from the beds unswept, 
Like children unloved and ill-kept 
Dreamed through the hours. 
Two blue hydrangeas by the blistered door, burned brown, 
Watched there and no one in the town 
Cared to go past, it night or day, 
Though why this was they wouldn't say. 
But, I the stranger, knew that I must stay, 
Pace up the weed-grown paths and down, 
Till one afternoon — there is just a doubt — 
But I fancy I heard a tiny shout — 
From an upper window a bird flew out — 
And I went my way. 



5° 



THE SHADE-CATCHERS 

I THINK they were about as high 
As haycocks are. They went running by 
Catching bits of shade in the sunny street : 
" I've got one," cried sister to brother. 

" I've got two." " Now I've got another.' 
But scudding away on their little bare feet, 
They left the shade in the sunny street. 



LE SACRE-COEUR 

(Montmartre) 

IT is dark up here on the heights, 
Between the dome and the stars it is quiet too, 
While down there under the crowded lights 

Flares the importunate face of you, 
Dear Paris of the hot white hands, the scarlet lips, the scented hair,, 
Une jolie fille a vendre, tres cher ; 
A thing of gaiety, a thing of sorrow, 
Bought to-night, possessed, and tossed 
Back to the mart again to-morrow, 
Worth and over, what you cost ; 
While half your charm is that you are 
Withal, like some unpurchasable star, 

So old, so young and infinite and lost. 

It is dark on the dome- capped hill, 

Serenely dark, divinely still, 
Yet here is the Man who bought you first 

Dying of his immortal smart, 
Your Lover, the King with the broken heart, 
Who while you, feasting, drink your fill, 
Pass round the cup 
Not looking up, 
Calls down to you, " I thirst." 

" A king with a broken heart ! Mon Dieu I 

One breaks so many, cela peut se crotre, 
To remember all c'est la mer a boire, 

And the first, mats comme c'est vieux. 
Perhaps there is still some keepsake — or 

One has possibly sold it for a song : 
On ne peut pas toujours pleurer les morts, 

And this One — He has been dead so long ! "' 



52 



SONG 

LOVE, Love to-day, my dear, 
Love is not always here ; 
Wise maids know how soon grows sere 
The greenest leaf of Spring ; 
But no man knoweth 
Whither it goeth 
When the wind bloweth 
So frail a thing. 

Love, Love, my dear, to-day, 
If the ship's in the bay, 
If the bird has come your way 
That sings on summer trees ; 
When his song faileth 
And the ship saileth 
No voice availeth 
To call back these. 



53 



SATURDAY MARKET 

BURY your heart in some deep green hollow 
Or hide it up in a kind old tree 
Better still, give it the swallow 
When she goes over the sea. 

In Saturday Market there's eggs a plenty 

And dead-alive ducks with their legs tied down, 
Grey old gaffers and boys of twenty — 

Girls and the women of the town — 
Pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces, 

Posies and whips and dicky-birds' seed, 
Silver pieces and smiling faces, 

In Saturday Market they've all they need. 

What were you showing in Saturday Market 

That set it grinning from end to end 
Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty — ? 

Cover it close with your shawl, my friend — 
Hasten you home with the laugh behind you, 

Over the down — , out of sight, 
Fasten your door, though no one will find you 

No one will look on a Market night. 

See, you, the shawl is wet, take out from under 

The red dead thing — . In the white of the moon 
On the flags does it stir again ? Well, and no wonder ! 

Best make an end of it ; bury it soon. 
If there is blood on the hearth who'll know it ? 

Or blood on the stairs, 
When a murder is over and done why show it ? 

In Saturday Market nobody cares. 

Then lie you straight on your bed for a short, short weeping 

And still, for a long, long rest, 
There's never a one in the town so sure of sleeping 

As you, in the house on the down with a hole in your breast. 

Think no more of the swallow, 
Forget, you, the sea, 
Never again remember the deep green hollow 
Or the top of the kind old tree ! 

54 



ARRACOMBE WOOD 

SOME said, because he wud'n spaik 
Any words to women but Yes and No, 
Nor put out his hand for Parson to shake 
He mun be bird-witted. But I do go 
By the lie of the barley that he did sow, 
And I wish no better thing than to hold a rake 
Like Dave, in his time, or to see him mow. 

Put up in churchyard a month ago, 
" A bitter old soul," they said, but it wadn't so. 
His heart were in Arracombe Wood where he'd used to go 
To sit and talk wi' his shadder till sun went low, 
Though what it was all about us'll never know. 

And there baint no mem'ry in the place 

Of th' old man's footmark, nor his face ; 

Arracombe Wood do think more of a crow — 
'Will be violets there in the Spring : in Summer time the spider's lace ; 

And come the Fall, the whizzle and race 
Of the dry, dead leaves when the wind gies chase ; 

And on the Eve of Christmas, fallin' snow. 



55 



SEA LOVE 

TIDE be runnin' the great world over : 
T'was only last June month I mind that we 
Was thinkin' the toss and the call in the breast of the lover 
So everlastin' as the sea. 

Heer's the same little fishes that sputter and swim, 
Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand ; 

An' him no more to me nor me to him 
Than the wind goin' over my hand. 



56 



THE ROAD TO KERITY 

DO you remember the two old people we passed on the road to Kerity, 
Resting their sack on the stones, by the drenched wayside, 
Looking at us with their lightless eyes through the driving rain, and then out again 
To the rocks, and the long white line of the tide : 

Frozen ghosts that were children once, husband and wife, father, and mother, 
Looking at us with those frozen eyes ; have you ever seen anything quite so chilled or so old? 

But we — with our arms about each other, 
We did not feel the cold ! 



57 



I HAVE BEEN THROUGH THE GATES 

HIS heart, to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers ; 
I saw it then as we see things in dreams, — I do not remember how long I slept ; 
I remember the trees, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the 

towers ; 
The walls are standing to-day, and the gates : I have been through the gates, I have 

groped, I have crept 
Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood ; they are empty ; darkness is over 

them ; 
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly 

rain, unclean and unswept, 
Like the heart of the holy city, old, blind, beautiful Jerusalem, 
Over which Christ wept. 



58 



THE CENOTAPH 

NOT yet will those measureless fields be green again 
Where only yesterday the wild, sweet, blood of wonderful youth was shed ; 
There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain, 
Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread . 
But here, where the watchers by lonely hearths from the thrust of an inward sword have 

. more slowly bled, 
We shall build the Cenotaph : Victory, winged, with Peace, winged too, at the column's 

head. 
And over the stairway, at the foot — oh ! here, leave desolate, passionate hands to spread 
Violets, roses, and laurel, with the small, sweet, twinkling country things 
Speaking so wistfully of other Springs, 

From the little gardens of little places where son or sweetheart was born and bred. 
In splendid sleep, with a thousand brothers 
To lovers — to mothers 
Here, too, lies he : 
Under the purple, the green, the red, 

It is all young life : it must break some women's hearts to see 
Such a brave, gay coverlet to such a bed ! 
Only, when all is done and said, 
God is not mocked and neither are the dead. 

For this will stand in our Market-place — 

Who'll sell, who'll buy 

(Will you or I 
Lie each to each with the better grace) ? 
While looking into every busy whore's and huckster's face 
As they drive their bargains, is the Face 
Of God : and some young, piteous, murdered face. 



59 



A SELECTION FROM 

THE LIST OF PUBLICATIONS OF 

THE POETRY BOOKSHOP 

35 Devonshire Street, Theobalds Road, London, W.C. i. 

Anthologies 

I GEORGIAN POETRY, 1911-12. Edited by E. M. Pp. 197. Brown 
Boards. Fifteenth Thousand. Price 7/6 net. (Postage 4d.). 

Contributors : — Lascelles Abercrombie — Gordon Bottomley — 
Rupert Brooke — G. K. Chesterton — W. H. Davies — Walter De La 
Mare — John Drinkwater — James Elroy Flecker — Wilfrid Wilson 
Gibson — D. H. Lawrence — John Masefield — Harold Monro — T„ 
Sturge Moore — Ronald Ross — E. B. Sargant — James Stephens — 
R. C. Trevelyan. 

II GEORGIAN POETRY, 1913-15. Edited by E.M. Pp.244. Blue Boards. 
Fourteenth Thousand. Price 7/6 net. (Postage 5d.). 

Contributors : — Lascelles Abercrombie — Gordon Bottomley — 
Rupert Brooke — W. H. Davies — Walter De La Mare — John Drink- 
water — James Elroy Flecker — Wilfrid Wilson Gibson — Ralph 
Hodgson — D. H. Lawrence — Francis Ledwidge — John Masefield — 
Harold Monro — James Stephens. 

Ill GEORGIAN POETRY, 1916-17. Edited by E. M. Pp. 186. Green 
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Contributors : — W. J. Turner — James Stephens — J. C. Squire 

— Siegfried Sassoon — I. Rosenberg — Robert Nichols — Harold 
Monro — John Masefield — Ralph Hodgson — Robert Graves — 
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson — John Freeman — John Drinkwater — Walter 
De La Mare — W. H. Davies — Gordon Bottomley — Maurice Baring 

— Herbert Asquith. 



IV GEORGIAN POETRY, 1918-19. Edited by E. M. Pp. 196. Orange 
Boards. Fifteenth Thousand. Price 7/6 net. (Postage 4d.). 

Contributors : — Lascelles Abercrombie — Gordon Bottomley — 
Francis Brett Young — W. H. Davies — Walter De La Mare — John 
Drinkwater — John Freeman — Wilfrid Wilson Gibson — Robert 
Graves — D. H. Lawrence — Harold Monro — Robert Nichols — J. 
D. C. Pellow — Siegfried Sassoon — Edward Shanks — Fredegond 
Shove — J. C. Squire — W. J. Turner. 

The object of the volumes of " Georgian Poetry " is to provide a convenient survey 
of the work of some poets of the newer generation. 

In each case the poems included are drawn from the years indicated in the title. 



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STRANGE MEETINGS. By Harold Monro. [A New Edition. (Third 
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POEMS. By John Alford. 2/- net. 

SPRING MORNING. By Frances Cornford. (Woodcuts by G. Raverat.) 
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A COLLECTION OF NURSERY RHYMES. With one hundred decorations 
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The Dramatic Works of Michael Field 

BORGIA (1905). 3/6 net. (Postage 40!.). 

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IN THE NAME OF TIME. 4/- net. (Postage 2d.). 

Rhyme Sheets (Coloured Decorations ) 

(Price 5d. net each.) Size 23 ins. by 8 ins. 

1 OH, WHAT SHALL THE MAN ? 

2 CHILDREN'S. (Three Poems.) 

3 POEMS BY WORDSWORTH. 

4 OVERHEARD ON A SALTMARSH. (Harold Monro.) Two Poems. 

5 ARABIA. (Walter De La Mare.) 

6 BEAUTIFUL MEALS. (T. Sturge Moore.) Two Poems. 

7 THE VULGAR LITTLE LADY. (Jane and Ann Taylor.) 

8 THE CITY. (John Drinkwater.) Two Poems. 

9 DRINKING. (Abraham Cowley.) 

10 KEITH OF RAVELSTON. (Sydney Dobell.) 

The Decorations of No's. 1, 2, 4 and 5 are by Charles Winzer ; No. 3 by Albert 
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Rhyme Sheets (Second Series) 

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1 VESPERS. (T. E. Brown.) 

2 THE OLD. (Roden Noel.) 

3 ON A CERTAIN LADY AT COURT. (Alexander Pope.) 

4 THERE IS A LADY SWEET AND KIND. (Anonymous.) 

5 A MEMORY. (William Allingham.) 

6 SONG. (Thomas Campion.) 

7 THE PARTING. (Michael Drayton.) 

8 FOR THE BAPTIST. (William Drummond.) 

9 MELANCHOLY. (John Fletcher.) 

10 THE SAD DAY. (Thomas Flatman.) 

11 BOG LOVE. (Shane Leslie.) 

12 FOR A GUEST ROOM. (John Drinkwater.) 

The Decorations of No's. 1, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 12 are by C. Lovat Fraser ; No. 2 
is by Paul Nash ; No's. 3 and 5 are by John Nash ; No. 8 is by Charles Winzer ; 
No. 9 by Rupert Lee. 

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THE POETRY BOOKSHOP was founded in 1912 with the object of estab- 
lishing a practical relation between poetry and the public. 

THE FOLLOWING LISTS will be sent on application : 

A List of some of the Principal Volumes of Modern Poetry 
stocked by the Poetry Bookshop. (Revised half-yearly .) 

A List of Books on Subjects connected with the Technique, 
History, and Criticism of Poetry. 

A List of Poetry Bookshop Publications. 

Address : 

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